Forgive me for sounding like an utter noob here. i just watched oceans 11 last night, and it features a "fight" between lewis and wlad in it, does anyone know if this ever cam close to happening? i remember steward once saying he advised lewis not to fight wlad. i know lewis got kayoed in 01 when wlad was still a champ. but he won his belt back and wlad didnt lose until 03.
Essentialy it didnt come close. Wlad would have been killed when Lewis landed a punch , you have to remember thie is pre Manny Wlad so his defece isnt up to much either.
Not really. Wlad's wbogus belt was meaningless and he really didn't have much of a coming out until he beat ancient Mercer, even though he'd beaten Byrd. At that time all the clamour was for Lewis Tyson. It took a long while after Wlad was pasted by Sanders for most to take him seriously and by that time Lewis was gone.
Would have been a great competitive fight no doubt. Lewis was getting older at that point in time while Wlad was just coming up, but I think Lennox's experience would have given him the edge. Wlad's stamina/chin issues hadn't surfaced at the time either.
I think there was a bit of talk of it as a fight for the future iirc but there were people ahead of Wlad in the queue and as I said, all the fans wanted to see Lewis-Tyson and nothing else would do. He was seen as a future top contender but he wasn't there yet. Up until the Sanders fight Wlad was viewed as the better of the two brothers but the Sanders fight happened, everybody switched their opinion and Vitali got there first. That's probably why it Was Wlad in the film and not Vitali. I think whoever advised the filmmakers was probably just future proofing.
i remember at the time all anyone i knew wanted to see was tyson vs lewis. and i know lewis had beaten previous wbo belt holders but they got stripped for taking the fight so it might have been a nonstarter.especially once rahman knocked him out.
What I'm trying to say is, at the time the film was made Wlad in the position where people were talking about what he'd be like in a few years and I think that's why they put him in the film, but he wasn't there yet, he needed a few more decent wins before getting a crack at Lewis. That might seem a bit silly considering Rahman got the fight but that was supposed to be an easy defence while they were conducting the mammoth negotiations to get the Tyson fight on. Of course Lewis was filming while Rahman was acclimatising himself to the south-african altitude and training hard and what happened happened. I don't think Wlad would be bothered about dumping the christmas ******* belt to fight Lewis.
ye he really took the rahman fight lightly, and i dont blame him cos everyone thought lewis would trounce him. but he looked like **** from the oppening bell.
prime lewis > prime wlad which is the guy we have nowadays, let alone the chinny dude that easily got ko'd.
Think of it this way: How does today's Wlad compare to the Lewis fight version of Vitali? I recon, the former givers a head-start to the latter, therefore beating prime Wlad would be problematic for Lewis. In other words, it would be a close fight which could have gone either way...